


The Tie Pin

by celluloidbroomcloset



Category: The Avengers (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:05:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3723169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloidbroomcloset/pseuds/celluloidbroomcloset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Steed and his best friend/nemesis Ambassador Brodny have a drink together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tie Pin

Ambassador Brodney was on his fourth gin and tonic, by Steed’s count. He was grinning a touch stupidly now, slumped back in the leather armchair, his small dark eyes glistening with that familiar wine (or gin) wet gaze. 

“Can I…can I tell you a secret, Steed?” said the Ambassador. 

“Anything.” Steed had an absurd hope that he wouldn’t betray some confidence in his cups that Steed would be obliged to report to his superiors.

“I…love…gin.” Brodney grinned and drank. Steed grinned back and tried to remember how many he himself had had thus far. Four, perhaps five. Perhaps more. 

“I do,” said Brodney, suddenly earnest. “I love it. Good English gin. We don’t have this, you know. We have…vodka.” He made face and Steed suppressed a laugh. “Vodka at lunch, vodka at dinner, vodka. Have you ever had vodka, Steed? It tastes…it does not taste.”

He sighed comically.

“Now, that’s not quite fair,” said Steed. “A good vodka martini, vermouth gently passing by the glass? Lovely.

Brodney groaned. “Lovely. That is not lovely. Lovely is…lovely is...” here he leaned forward, coming dangerously close to smacking his forehead into Steed’s. “Lovely is my secretary.”

Steed’s eyebrow cocked. “Natalia?” 

The girl was indeed attractive – tall, shapely, blonde-haired and blue-eyed. A big girl, in all the right places. 

“Yes,” Brodney groaned into his drink. “Natalia. Light of my life! Her hair smells of vanilla spice!”

Steed laughed. “Well, what have you done about it, old man?” 

“Done about it? Nothing. I’ve done nothing.” The pleasant face turned melancholic. “What can I do?”

Steed shrugged. “Ask her to dinner, take her to a show. The usual.”

“The usual. Oh, it is all very well for you to say! You would have no difficulties. Oh, Natalia! She is the perfect girl, Steed.”

Steed highly doubted that – he had his own views on the subject, but understood Brodney’s dilemma.

Brodney’s face suddenly lit up and turned back from melancholic to joyful and just a bit wiley. Steed unconsciously sat back.

“You don’t think so, though? You have the delectable Mrs. Peel.” 

Steed cleared his throat. He never fooled himself that colleagues – not to mention enemies - were unaware of the nature of his relationship to Mrs. Peel. They maintained the necessary fiction of ‘just good friends’ more for the sake of professional propriety than anything else. Steed was of the mind that what he did in the privacy of his own apartment, and with whom he did it, was not for public consumption. Mrs. Peel was equally protective of her privacy. But that they were lovers, and had been for some time, he knew was a matter of public knowledge. 

There were times, however, when he would have liked someone – a trusted friend, perhaps – to talk to about her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said carefully, aware that the words were slurring a little together.

Brodney giggled. “Oh, come now, old boy. I know, you know. She’s a very attractive woman, eh?”

Steed’s eyebrow cocked. “I’d never deny that.” 

“And what about those little presents she gives you? What about that tie pin?”

Brodney poked at Steed’s tie with one of his little sausage fingers. 

Steed fingered the diamond pin. She’d given it to him, on a whim, a month or so ago. No special occasion, although…he smiled, and didn’t much care that Brodney saw it. The pin was a replacement, of sorts, for one that he’d been forced to part with. But this one of course contained the trappings for microfilm – a sort of payback for the time he’d given her a set of diamond earrings that doubled as microphones. A private joke between them.

Yet he wore the pin even when he didn’t need the microfilm. It reminded him of that night, of her maddening dark eyes and her smile as she gave him the little box, and the way she said, “For services rendered.” Of her teasing laugh that he’d stopped with his mouth, swallowing her laughter, turning it to a breathy sigh. They hadn’t even made love; just lay there on his sofa, trading kisses, caresses, her clothed breasts filling his hands, her fingers stroking his stomach. When she rose to go, he watched her walk across the room, long, lithe, and cat-like woman. Dangerous. She turned in his arms as he helped her on with her coat, gave him one final lingering kiss, tongue slipping against his, and the final nip on his bottom lip before she left him, the taste of her still warm on his tongue. He went to bed alone, but for the first time he knew that he would never need any other woman but her. 

Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face, as quickly as the memory sped through his mind. The Russian ambassador’s face turned thoughtful. 

“Ah, my friend,” he said, and Steed heard the commiseration in his voice.

“You’re an old fox, Brodney.” Steed splashed more brandy into his glass and held it up. “To the women in our lives, eh? May we be worthy of them."

Brodney smiled as they touched glasses.


End file.
